


warm hands (cold hearts)

by dullsville



Series: wishing we were warmer [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Light Angst, canon has been so mean to them so they need happiness, end of season 4 bc i love suffering, everyone is friends and everyone is happy sorta, post 4x13, sad but im trying yall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-24 17:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16644839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dullsville/pseuds/dullsville
Summary: Bellamy thought he could save Clarke, but he doesn't know that she's already been saved.Or the one where after years of trying, Raven might actually get the damn radio to work.





	warm hands (cold hearts)

 

_Year One_

 

He thinks he can see her.

Coming in through the big doors, still without her suit, golden hair trailing behind her.

He is almost positive he hears her voice. How she smiles when she tells him he should've left without her. They should've been gone by now, but he would smile back and tell her he would never leave her behind. 

The earth is shaking around them as the ship gets ready for take off and he's stepping back, closing the doors and sitting back and away from the window. She's not here. Why isn't she here with them?

"We have to go," Raven whispers to him and he can barely here it as the ship launches, sending him farther and farther away from her.

She is but only a phantom dream, one that wakes him in a cold sweat. 

Bellamy wonders what life could've been with her on the Ark. Would they have found a quicker way to get back to earth? Would she have found her place alongside him, trying to lead as they entered the next phase of their life, miles away from their family stuck on the rotting earth. He thinks of her often when he closes his eyes, how her hair resembled the sun and her eyes the sky. She was made from the earth, carved from it's very core. She had died when the fires spread, when the once green planet turned to ash and ruin as destruction rained upon them like their first rain. She had died alone amongst the ash.

 ______________________

Clarke was not alone. 

She was for most of her time. Fending for herself and fighting off urges she had never encountered before that left her scared and breathless. Yet, she was still not alone. He was with her for most of her time, his voice in the back of her head telling her off. He was always there, but she didn't know if he had died on the ride up or died once they realized there was no air circulating through the rusted vents of the Ark. Would they have figured it out without her? Or would they have needed her and perished before they got the chance to live and start a new?

Clarke shakes her head, burying herself into her work. She needed to get the rover up and working, she needed to get out of this eroded graveyard. She needed to find trees, or what was left of them. She needed to find Polis, her mom, Bellamy's sister, and the rest of her friends trapped in the bunker underneath God knows what out there. 

All she needed was to forget about the travesty that could be laying outside in the stars and remember what laid beneath the earth. 

A new start.

 ______________________

He wonders if that little speck of green on the planet was a sign.

A sign for them to figure their shit out and get back down sooner. To test the radiation levels and work harder at getting back home. His mind shifted from her to Octavia, was she even alive? Had her and her people survived long enough with the food they had stored? Or did they not even come together, kill each other off as a way to make peace. To have more food for themselves, more supplies for less people-

"I know what you're thinking about and you have to quit it," Raven says from behind him. 

He looks at her from over his shoulder, rolling his eyes and avoiding her subject, "How long until we get communications up?"

She walks up beside him, her eyes on the same speck of green his were on. "There's a chance we might never have them up. I've tried the radio and I've gotten only static."

"So we have no idea if anyone is even alive down there?" he asks, voice desperate. It had only been thirty days since Praimfaya and he was on edge. More edge than he had been for a while, similar to when they had all gone down to earth for the first time. All hundred of them.

"No clue," Raven says back. "But we'll figure this out, I promise. This is just the beginning, Bellamy, we have all the time in the world to figure everything out."

He nods, not feeling particularly confident. They had all the time in the world, but did the people trapped on earth?

 ______________________

Clarke's burns were healing. It had officially been fifty-four days since Praimfaya and the scabs were beginning to heal completely against her hands and chest. The rover was up and running and she had found food. Not real food of course, but a bird she cooked against a small fire and ate with more excitement than she had in a long time. 

She held the radio up to her face, holding down on the button to speak as she looks out across the desert from her spot in Polis amongst the ruble. "Bellamy. It's been sixty days since Praimfaya and I'm worried that I won't even be able to get down into the bunker." 

She looks around, holding the radio to her forehead as she thinks. There was a chance they could hear her up there in the Ark, that the radio was going straight to them. But even after sixty days, they hadn't responded back, so were they even getting her calls? Or maybe they were all dead anyways and her cause was pointless. 

"I'm loosing faith," she whispers into the radio. "I found food, but it feels like everything is falling apart. I'm terrified I won't make it out here if I can't find more food, a place to live, warmth-" She sighs. "The bunker is buried deep and I won't be able to open it by myself. I wish you were here, Bellamy. I wish all of you were here."

 ______________________

Madi finds Clarke fifty-eight days after. Nearly kills her too, leading her straight into a bear trap that caught her foot easily. 

She was a nightblood. A real one, not the falsified type Clarke was. Born one and still one, Madi was fierce. She terrifies Clarke in a way that thrills her to her core. She could only hope they would stick together through all of this, so maybe, they wouldn't be so alone anymore.

 ______________________

Raven can feel herself tiring of the same old routine after a hundred days on the Ark. Monty had nearly perfected the algae farm, but with some of it still being near deadly, she was afraid she'd have to starve. She was always afraid. She didn't want to be, but living here and knowing you had to be back down on earth in four more years gave her more anxiety than she hoped. It was on her to figure it out. 

She was the one they relied on the most. 

She was the mechanic after all. The genius. 

She had begun to doze off at her work station when she hears the door open, causing her to look behind her to see a shy Emori standing in the doorway. "Thought I'd come by to see how you were doing?"

"I'm doing great," Raven replies, hoping it didn't sound too sarcastic. She looks away, she wasn't sure what she truly wanted, but she knew it wasn't just to say a casual hello. 

She was grateful Emori decided to just come out and say it, still standing awkwardly by the doorway as she did. "I was thinking-well-maybe that-I don't know-you could teach me some things?"

"Things?"

"Mechanics, how to run the Ark successfully, how to launch the ship…incase you need a right hand man. You can't just sit up here by yourself on days end, you need someone helping you."

Raven couldn't stop her smile from spreading across her face as she stood from her seat. She approaches Emori with her hand out and an even larger grin, "Welcome aboard."

Emori takes her hand and they both shook, finding themselves in a newfound partnership and friendship.

 ______________________

He wasn't sure what he hated most, the way the algae tasted or how Echo stared at him from across the room, a brooding look on her face. 

It had been a hundred and fifty days since Praimfaya, and Murphy was still nervous to talk to Echo. He didn't have any reason to be nervous, but she was intimidating. It wasn't until she walks up to him as he had a mouthful of algae in his mouth.

"You haven't spoken to Emori in weeks."

He looks up at her, chewing slowly.

"Why?"

He swallows thickly, trying not to gag at the indescribable taste this batch of algae gave off. "And this has to do with you because…?"

"She misses you," she says back, crossing her arms. 

"And how would you know?"

She rolled her eyes. "You really must think so little of me, that I wouldn't have a single friend out of the bunch of you. Emori and I talk, and if you were more present with her, you would know that she misses you."

Murphy stares at her, eyes hardening. He wanted to hear more about what Emori thought about him, but he didn't want to sit here and listen to it from her. Instead, he pushed his bowl away from him and says, "Eat. You haven't been doing much of that recently."

She stared at him, surprised he had noticed. But how could he not? There were seven of them, not a hundred. It was easy to notice when someone wasn't at meals. 

"It's not that good, but you need it," he tells her, folding his hands at the table. 

She sat down, taking the fork and bringing some of the algae up to her lips. She ate silently, not protesting at the taste or even the strange smell. When she had finished the bowl, they sat together in the comfortable silence the Ark gave off, save for the groans and creaks it gave off from time to time. When they finally looked at each other, she says in a soft voice, "Talk to her."

He finds himself smiling, nodding even and saying back, "I will."

 ______________________

"Bellamy, please don't blame yourself," Clarke says into the radio, a hundred and eighty-three days since she was left behind. "It wasn't your fault. It has never been your fault. You didn't leave me behind. If you can even hear this, know that even if you do believe you played a part in this and if you need forgiveness, fine. I forgive you. You're forgiven."

 ______________________

Harper wonders what her life could've been if she had stayed to die with Jasper and the others. 

Would she have even died? Or had been left behind just like Clarke when she came to her senses too late?  

She was thankful she didn't need to think of the possibilities, being wrapped up in Monty's arms. She was thankful for him, thankful for her friends, and thankful for the life she was given to live. 

"You asleep?" Monty whispers, face buried deep into her hair.

She smiled, "No."

"I love you," he murmurs back, like he was already falling back asleep against her.

She couldn't help herself, staring up at the ceiling with a grin bigger than the sun. "I love you too."

 ______________________

Two hundred and thirty-seven days. 

That's how long they've been on the Ark. 

And everything was running smoothly, that was until Murphy and Emori had their fifth fight aboard the Ark. 

It was loud and angry and it ended with Murphy getting a door slammed in his face. He was upset-no, not just upset-he was enraged. He had never felt this type of anger, the one that eased through him like water. It was easy to be angry, too easy. Raven found him alone in one of the old bedrooms he hadn't bothered to use yet until now. He was sitting with his back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him as he watches her come in.

"Heard about what happened," she says as she shut the door behind her. "Thought I'd come in and call you a dick before Echo does."

"Thanks," he murmurs back as she sat down next to him, her braced leg laying straight. She would have difficulty standing after this and that made him only feel guiltier for what he had done to her. 

"No, really," she says and he has hope she would console him for a moment, ask him how he truly was but the shit eating grin she has spreading across her face told him otherwise. "You're a _dick_."

" _Thanks_."

"She's been working so hard," Raven says. "Working with me and the others, and _trying_ to work with you-but _no_. You had to go run your big mouth and tell her you wanted to break up? Why? Why do that to her? She's crushed! Absolutely destroyed over this!"

"We haven't spoken in months, Raven. It was bound to happen."

"We haven't even been up in space for a year, how was it bound to happen?" she asks, trying to get to the bottom of his cryptic tone. "You two were fine back on earth, at the lab-"

"We aren't now."

"And why is that?"

"Why do you even care, Raven? We aren't even friends."

"We're friends, Murphy," she sighs, bringing her good knee up to her chest as she speaks to him. "You're different now, we all are. And whether you like it or not, we've been friends for a long time now."

He's desperate to find a way for her to hate him. "I shot you-"

"You were different then."

"Doesn't matter-"

"You were different and I forgave you, didn't I?" she whispers, yet she rolls her eyes and gets back to the topic at hand, "What changed between you and Emori?"

He couldn't meet her eyes, looking at the wall across from him. He hadn't been so sure at first, but the thought came to him only a few days ago and a part of him feared to say it out loud. "We were made for the earth, not space. What we had doesn't feel as sacred as it once was."

"Jesus, Murphy," she groans, not looking at him and at the wall his eyes were still trained on. "So it's just over between the two of you now?"

He shrugs, "I guess so."

"Well, you can't just sit in here for the next four years and wallow in self pity. Come by the workshop, I'm not always opposed to talking with you," she says to him, pushing herself to her feet with the held of the wall. "Besides, it looks like you could use a _friend_."

He watches her leave in awe, wondering when or they had become friends and how it was easy to speak to her than before. Maybe they weren't made for the earth, but they were made for space.

______________________

 

_Year Two_

 

Three hundred and eighty days had already gone by her. And the earth was changing her. She was being molded and shaped into a different person, one she didn't recognize when she would catch her reflection in the water of the lake. Her hair was longer and she was afraid she'd need to cut it, but she was afraid to let go of that part of her that was _her_. 

The girl from the sky.

She was interrupted from her thoughts by water splashing in her face and she erupts in a fit of laughter as the younger girl across from her giggles and sticks her tongue out at her. 

"Madi!" she laughs, cupping her hands to splash her back. 

The younger girl hides beneath the water, only her eyes peeking up from the wet veil as she swims away from her. Clarke wonders how she got so lucky or was this not luck after all and just fate playing its usual tricks?

Once the night settles in, after hours of playing and working, they go home. To their little wooden church leftover from the fires, untouched and unscathed. Clarke wonders if this was an act of fate too, setting everything up for her, knowing she would come here. 

The pair eat dinner in their comfortable silence and when Clarke puts Madi to bed, she's half expecting the girl to fall asleep instantly, like most nights. Instead, she pulls on Clarke's sleeve and whispers to her, "Who's Bellamy?"

She's startled, staring down at Madi with her brows furrowed. "What?"

"You talk to him everyday," she explains. "I've heard you talk to him, say his name. You talk into that-" she points across the room to where the radio lays on their little table. 

Clarke sits down on the edge of the bed, holding Madi's hand as she scoots over to let her have more room. Clarke sighs with a soft smile, "He was my friend, from way before I met you. We were leaders. We fought together and we won. But the world tore us apart, leaving me here to lead and him to lead in space."

"Like a king and queen," she whispers, eyes heavy.

"Yeah, just like that-"

"Except you were warriors," she says in a curious voice before confessing to Clarke, "I found your drawings today, I wish you would draw more."

"Tomorrow, maybe I can tell you more about the people I draw," Clarke tells her, brushing her hair back as Madi's eyes finally close and her breathing deepens as she falls asleep. 

Clarke moves from the little bed to the table, picking up the radio and holding it up to her lips with a smile, "I'm going to tell her about you." She takes the radio and walks out of their home and sits down on the front steps to look up at the dark sky. "I don't know how I'm going to describe you to her. Do I start with how much I despised you in the beginning or go straight to when we were friends." She sighs, rubbing her forehead as her eyes catch the shine of stars in the sky. "Or do I start with how I massacred all of those people in Mount Weather. How do I tell her about what they call me? _Wanheda_ , commander of death. I killed so many people, how do I ever tell her about that? What will she do when I finally tell her the truth?" 

She runs her fingers over the wooden step she sits on, fingers catching on the uneven wood as she thinks. When she speaks again, her voice is but a mere whisper, "I wish you were here."

She tells Madi about them the next day as they are sitting outside, a fire warming their cold hands as they sit together. She waits until it's dark to tell her about them, finding it easier when it was more difficult to see the emotion on Madi's face when she tells her. Clarke starts with the hundred.

"We were sent to earth-" she starts, eyes on the fire. "-from the castle in the sky. There was a hundred and one of us in the beginning, counting Bellamy. He had sneaked onto the spaceship that would carry us down, to protect his sister. _Octavia_. But, we came to realize that being on the ground wasn't as safe as we all thought. There were monsters, both from the ground and from the mountain-"

"What type of monsters?" Madi asks, sitting close to her. 

"The ones that killed and tortured," Clarke responds, wondering if her story was too graphic for someone as young as she was. "They hurt us, so we hurt them back. We lost many people to the monsters, but we still survived. We hunted and built homes and walls to protect us from it all. That was until the monsters came for us from the mountain, trying to steal our bones. But we defeated them too, alongside the monsters from the ground because in a way, we were all monsters too. Madi," she sighs again, taking the girls hand. "There are no good guys anymore."

"But you're a good guy."

She shakes her head with a smile. "I was never a good guy, none of us were. We were grounders and grounders didn't need to be good."

Clarke tells Madi she'll continue her story tomorrow but Madi stops her, puling something from her jacket and unfolds it out for her. Clarke smiles at the drawings she must have taken before going out here tonight. Madi hands a drawing to her and asks in a little voice, "Who is she?"

"Lexa."

"Tell me about her."

Clarke stares at the picture she had drawn in hope to see her face one last time, to get every detail right. "She was one of the greatest loves of my life. She was a warrior, a queen. She lead her people with mine when we defeated the mountain. We fell in love easily during the war, so it was hard to let her go after everything. It was hard to walk away."

"What happened to her? Is she in the sky? The bunker?"

Clarke shakes her head, holding the drawing out to the fire and watching the flames catch onto the paper gently. She lets go and lets the drawing sink to the bottom of the fire pit, watching as the paper crumples and finally burns away into ash. "She died a long time ago."

"Do you miss her?"

"Yes."

Madi hands her another drawing. "What about him?"

She can't speak, forgetting about this drawing. She hadn't even noticed it had gone missing as she takes it into her hands and runs her fingers along his jawline and over the softness of his eyes. She wonders what life could've been like he had survived. Would he be with her? In the sky? Or buried deep inside the ground? "He was my best friend on the Ark, the castle in the sky. I was so angry with him for so long that when it came time to let him go, it was devastating. He died way before his time and he haunts me every day since. Whether or not I think of him first, he's always there. A little part of me would always be with him, one way or another. We were childhood friends, best friends for life and a part of me will always find myself guilty for his death even though I wasn't the one with the knife. It will always be my fault, one way or another." She shakes her head, holding his picture out to the fire as if this was their last rites, the fire finally letting their spirits go. "His father was the Chancellor on the Ark, he was our leader before me and Bellamy. He helped send us to the ground, he helped send his only son to the ground to die. They sent us to die." She lets go of the paper and watches it burn against the ash.

"What was his name?"

"Wells."

"Do you miss him?"

"Yes."

"What about him?" she asks as she hands over the last drawing she had taken. A part of Clarke hearts breaks as she looks at his face and how she had saved his life when they first reached the ground. When they learned of the grounders for the first time and she had brought him back from the brink of death. 

"He was my friend after we were sent down. He was best friends with a man named Monty and he was once in love with Octavia. He fell in love with a girl from the mountain, who was someone that was kind to us and helped us. She was not a monster like the rest and he saw it in her," she explains in a soft voice as the flames catch the paper and burn easily through the googles she had drawn strapped to his forehead. "He was kind, sweet, and funny, and he was a good friend to me. Jasper was a good man, but he didn't see the world like we did. He saw something dangerous in it, something vile and deadly. He was smarter than us."

"Where is he now? With Lexa and Wells?"

She nods, wiping her face that was surprisingly dry. "Yes."

"What's that little saying you say sometimes when you talk to the radio?" Madi asks her, staring into the fire. "You say it when you speak to Bellamy."

Clarke thinks, racking her brain for what she could be talking about and smiling when she realizes. "May we meet again."

Madi nods, eyes still on the fire as she grips Clarke's hand tighter. "May we meet again."

Later that night, as Clarke speaks into the radio, she finds her heart beating quickly in her chest. She wishes she was with them, she wishes she hadn't been left behind, but what would've happened to Madi if she wasn't here? Would she have even survived? With questions still pounding in her head, she holds down onto the radio with a smile she didn't know was there. "Three hundred and eight-one days, Bellamy," she whispers into the radio. "That's how long I've been missing you."

______________________

Raven wonders what made her want to befriend Echo, but it wasn't because she knocked her flat on her ass during training. It was definitely not that.

She decides that night she would invite her to come work with her and Emori, destress and blow off some steam with the girls. She was even considering pulling Harper away from Monty for a girls night. So that's what they did. Raven invites everyone to her workshop and they sit around and talk, all the while helping Raven complete some work for the Ark's heater system, trying to find a way to keep it running successfully through the night, which she seemed to fail at completing every night.

While they sit, barely talking and in uncomfortable batches of awkward silence, Raven sighs. "It's always been two yeas and I don't think I know one thing about Echo."

"We train together," Echo says back. "You know my techniques."

"Not enough," she says, shaking her head. "Every girl has to share a secret, one we all might not know about the other. Because like it or not, we're all stuck up here for another year and we're gonna have to like each other."

She looks at their uneasy faces before raising her hand and murmuring only semi confidently, "Finn wasn't the spacewalker. I was."

"Spacewalker?" Emori asks. "Murphy had mentioned the name before, didn't connect the dots."

Echo looked confused, her eyebrows narrowed and Raven sighs again and explains, "Spacewalking, it's kind of what we did to get onto the Ark. You float around outside connected to the rig, you have oxygen and it's mostly used for the mechanics and engineers to repair damages outside. But I got cocky, wanted to show off. So, I put my suit on and went out and cost the Ark two months worth of oxygen and my boyfriend at the time, Finn, covered for me. I was above the legal age, so if I had been caught I would have been floated, which is being sent out into space with no suit to die. But Finn was then deemed 'spacewalker' and everyone didn't question it because he _was_ turned in for the crime. But it was me. It was my fault the Ark lost two months of air, not him."

Harper goes next, raising her hand like Raven had and she speaks gently, like she's embarrassed, "I had a pregnancy scare three months ago."

"But don't you have the implant?" Raven asks.

Harper nods. "I woke up every morning for a week straight throwing up and I feared the worst, because it's not like I haven't read a book about this stuff, because I have. Plenty now, at least."

Emori shifts in her seat. "What did it end up being?"

"Really weird side affect to the algae Monty was making. Weirder than the one that knocked Murphy out for three days," Harper says with a laugh. "But it made me think, I _want_ a family. And I think Monty does too, because I told him about the scare and he was so supportive and-" she looks away, emotion coating her face like glass. "-we came up with these baby names and- _I don't know_ -it just made me think."

"For a girl?"

Harper looks at Raven with a slight smile at her lips, saying, "Hannah."

"And for a boy?"

She pulls one of her legs up to her chest with a distant smile, "Jordan Jasper."

A smile comes easily to Raven's face as she thinks of her friend, someone who had meant so much to all of them for so long. "I miss him," she says.

"Monty doesn't talk about him much anymore," Harper confesses. "I think it hurts him too much. I try and I try to get him to open up about him, but the topic is sacred. I think he's just afraid to admit that maybe Jasper was right about everything. I know I believed him, I believed there was nothing better but I understand now. I understand that beautiful things can happen on the ground, with us."

"He saw the world differently from us," Raven whispers, moving in her seat to sit with the rest of the girls on the floor. She sits with her bad leg out in front of her, her hand going to her knee as she speaks, "He just needed to be free and in the end he was."

Silence soaked through them, long enough that when Echo speaks, it shocks Raven. "It's been four hundred and five days since I last got laid."

A smile so wide that it threatens to split her lips, Raven laughs. "What the hell?! Why haven't you at least banged Bellamy? Or-sorry Emori-Murphy? You have two options and not only them, you have us. You have your pick of some of the most attractive people in the world sitting at your feet! Why haven't you acted on it?"

"Who says I'm not going to act on it tonight."

Raven watches as Echo's cheeks slowly get red and Raven notices Emori's cheeks slightly reddening as she straightens in her seat. "Are you two going-Echo what the _hell_!" Raven is laughing, harder than she had in a while as she sits clutching her stomach, afraid tears will come to her eyes. 

Emori nods, "We've been hanging out more, after everything with Murphy-"

"What did happen with Murphy?" Harper asks her, scooting closer as her interests peaks even higher.

"He didn't break up with me, I broke up with him," Emori says, her cheeks red as she looks at the floor in between the two girls eager to know more. "And it happened about one month before. We staged the whole fight because we had broken up and no one noticed because it wasn't like we were on speaking terms anyways. So we faked it-"

"Holy shit," Raven whispers, a grin spreading across her face. "You two had _me feeling sad_ towards Murphy! I felt _bad_ for him! I even went out of my way to call him a dick to his face!" She runs a hand through her hair and looks at Emori, a hand resting on her knee. "After girls night, I'm going to make fun of him so badly."

Harper smiles, leaning into Raven from her spot near her. "Can we make girls night a weekly event? I think we need this more than we think."

The girls all smile and nod and Harper even suggest that they try and make Monty recreate one of his famous moonshines, laughing about a moonshine tasting like algae. They all sit together for the first time alone since coming to the Ark, laughing and reminiscing of the past and when they come to her, the room is weary and warm.

"She died for us," Harper whispers, reaching out and taking Raven's hand and then Echo, who was to her right. "We left her to die down there-"

"We didn't have enough time to wait," Raven tells her, trying to reassure her but she knew it wouldn't work because there would always be that possibility that if they waited just a few more seconds, maybe she would have made it. Maybe.

"She died alone."

Raven looks down, they left her not only to die but to die _alone_.

______________________

She is cold against his skin. Her hair a dull yellow in the lights as he held her close, wanting to remember what it was like to hold her but she was always fading. Her body slipping away into dark matter around him, blurring into the sky like estranged stars. But as she appeared farther and farther away from him, she burned bright than any star he had ever seen. She was her own burning sun.

Bellamy wakes up with his heart beating loudly in his ears, sweat dripping down the back of his neck. He runs a nervous hand through his hair as he pushes his way out of his bed, standing on weak feet. He hadn't dreamt of her for months and she came back with a vengeance. There were things he wanted to say to her, to express to her in ways he had never done before and then he remembers. He always remembers.

She's dead. 

And she's always going to be dead.

______________________

Monty hates the algae more than he hates the way Bellamy still mopes over her. He hates the taste more than he hates the way the sun nearly blinds him every morning when he sits and watches the earth. He hates the texture even more than he hates the way Raven can't figure out how to fix the heating system in his room, hating the way Harper wakes up covered in sweat. 

The algae was his thing. He created it and uses his talents to feed everyone, and he should love it. 

But he _hates_ it.

He knows the algae will taste horrible before he even fixes the next batch. He knew the algae was going to knock Murphy out for three days by the smell of it alone. Maybe that was why he practically force fed it to Murphy instead of Echo wanting to be his taste tester. It was like the algae knew it's way with him, knowing him better than himself. He would think after nearly five hundred days being on the Ark and working with it, he would finally perfect the algae, but it seemed that it liked making a fool out of him.

"What's this batch going to be?" Harper asks him, hanging an arm over his shoulders as he works. 

"Gross," he responds, trying to add exactly the right amount of everything to try and make it better. 

"Will it almost kill Murphy again or are we safe this time?"

"Safe, but still gross. Too gross."

Monty picks a piece up with his fingers, turning it in his hands and his face scrunched up, he was disgusted. It was lumpy and thick and slimy, but instead of throwing it out and restarting, he hands the bowl to Harper.

"Is this one going to Echo to try or…?" she trails off with a smile on her face that Monty mimics, grinning.

"Murphy. Give it to Murphy."

______________________

The receiver won't work. 

The radio won't work.

Nothing was working.

The communications system was still down and Raven feared she would never get it to work. She wanted it to work so badly she thought she would blow a gasket trying to get the old thing to come alive. 

"Please," she whispers, putting together the last piece of the receiver again as she holds down the mic. "Can anyone read me? Is anyone out there?"

Silence answers her and she throws down the radio, clearing her work desk with both hands. Papers and scrap metals and the old radio and receiver went flying off the table in a tangle of wires and spare parts. She rests her face in her hands, hoping one day the old thing would finally work. Hoping that she could hear the familiar voie of Octavia, telling her they were safe and happy in the bunker, so she could tell her the same about the Ark.

She missed them.

A little too much.

______________________

Madi decides to give Clarke a heart attack. Clarke knows she doesn't mean it, but she decided to run down towards the edge of the green to find the flowers Clarke said she loved a few days before without telling her. So when Clarke comes back from the lake and finds the young girl not there, she thinks of the worst. 

"Madi!" she screams, searching the woods. She ducks her head behind trees and where she knows Madi likes to hide when they play. She even circles the lake five times before running back to camp to find the girl still _not there_. "Madi?! Where are you?!"

She's crying by the time it gets dark and she's collapsed over her bed when the door opens and the young girl comes running it with a handful of little red flowers. She pulls the girl into her, holding her to her chest and crying against the warmth she gave off. When Clarke pulls back, she brushes Madi's hair back, whispering to her, "If you go somewhere, please tell me before you do. You scared the hell out of me-"

"I went to get these!" Madi says, shocked to find Clarke so upset. So when she holds the flowers up, hoping to cheer the woman up, Clarke only cries harder. Madi had never seen her cry before and she worries, the young girl rubbing Clarke's back and asking, "Clarke, are you okay? I'm sorry-I won't do that again-I promise-"

Clarke holds her again, keeping the young girl pressed against her as she calms down enough to whisper, "I love you, Madi. You're my family and I wouldn't know what to do without you-"

"I love you, Clarke," she responds with a smile, hugging her back as tightly as she could. 

______________________

"I think you should just tell me," Raven says to him, staring from her spot across the table.

Bellamy doesn't move, the common area is dark despite the light coming from the window behind her. He sits with his hands folded in his lap, the dried remnants of tears against his cheek and he feels like he was just caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing. But he knew that it was fine, he was allowed to show feelings, it wasn't something to be guilty of but instead he whispers back, "There's nothing to tell."

Raven rolls her eyes, seeing right through him. "Bell, I know you better than to just believe you when you say shit like that. You are okay, you're hiding something. You can tell me, alright? I won't make fun of you, it's safe to talk to me."

He knows this but a part of him still won't open up. His heart is thumping loudly in his chest and he knows he can tell her, but he still feels foolish. He will always feel foolish about it, because of how it ended. Of how she ended up, it will always be foolish.

Raven runs a hand through her hair and whispers, "It's been five hundred and thirty-seven days since Praimfaya, Bellamy, and we've known each other even longer before that so just tell me what's bothering you. Because I can't just stand around and watch you sulk for another five hundred days."

He looks at her before running both hands over his face and saying in a small voice, "I loved her, Raven. I was in love with her."

She sits silently, watching him with gentle eyes. "Did she know?"

He shook his head. "I was going to tell her, before all of this, but the time didn't seem right. I thought-" he groans, rubbing his face. "-I thought I had _more_ _time_."

"Bell-"

"She's _dead_ ," he snaps, looking at her through a blur in his eyes. "I left her to die-"

"We. We left her to die," Raven say back. "It's not just on you, Bellamy. We were all there, we all made the call together and it was the right call as hard as that sounds. She wouldn't have made it on time, we all would have died."

"At least then she wouldn't have died alone."

"Bellamy," Raven murmurs, trying to help him and he knows that but he was so frustrated. He was so frustrated with himself he didn't even know what to do. "You loved her and you will always love her, but you said it yourself, she's dead. Don't you think it's time we mourn her? Have a funeral or something?"

He looks at her and thinks for a moment, liking the idea of finally coming to together and grieving her together so he nods. "When?"

"Tomorrow," she answers. "We'll talk, laugh, and cry about her. Of course we won't even stop missing her, but getting together and talking might help. It might help you feel better, just a little at least." Raven gives him one last pitying look before leaving him to sit at the table and he stands to move to the window, wondering how long it would take for them to truly get back to the ground. Would it be five years they promised, or would it be longer?

He stares out the window and at the little patch of green he was always so infatuated with. It was calling to him, it was home. Octavia was there, still inside the bunker and he misses her. He misses his sister with every breath and he prays that she's okay, he prays they are safe.

His mind wanders to Octavia and when they were kids, how he had helped her hide under the floor for so many years. How it had initially been his fault she was caught, but maybe that had been a good thing. Her getting caught led him to the ground, led him to _her_.

_"Clarke," he whispers. "You shouldn't of left."_

_"I know," she responds back, looking at him through her lashes. She sits, slumped against the wall of the office inside the lab. They had spoken about what she had done, why she had left and how it had hurt him, but he brought up the old subject in hopes it would clear the air even more. He wanted them to be normal again, he wanted them to be leaders. To trust and to love._

_"All that time ago, you should have stayed," he says as if he was pleading with her to stay all over again. "I get that you had to go, you needed to leave, but you left_ me _."_

_She looks away from him, overcome with emotion as it spreads across her face. "I wish I could've stayed, forced myself somehow. But I couldn't, I couldn't face all of those people again. I couldn't even face Jasper after-" she looks down and swallows and he can tell that it's hurting her. "-after Maya. I killed so many people, kids-I killed children-"_

_"We did it together," he reminds her, moving towards her and crouching down next to her. He takes her hand and she looks at him, really looks up at him and lets out a long held breath as he repeats to her, "We did it together."_

_There is a moment when all they do is stare, holding each others hands as their eyes search the others for unspoken answers. They are quiet and he wants to speak, to tell her everything but he can't open his mouth to speak. So when she speaks first, it startles him._

_"The ground has changed us," she says to him in a soft whisper, her thumb stroking the side of his hand. "You've changed since the first day I met you, I've changed-" She stands, pulling him up with her as she continues to speak, "-you've become a person I can rely on, someone I can trust. We became leaders together, we kept our people safe and we're about to save six more. Without you, I don't know what I would've done."_

_"Clarke?" he whispers, brows furrowing, confused with where she was going._

_She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her face pale as the radiation slowly got to her. He was afraid she would die from it, but he knew better. Her blood ran black, not red. "You're my best friend, Bellamy. I know that sounds crazy, seeing how far we've come, but you are. I need you to know how much you mean to me, if something goes wrong-"_

_"Nothing is going to happen," he says, taking her hands again. "You're going to be fine, I'm going to be fine, everyone is going to be fine-"_

_"But if we aren't," she interrupts him with a scared smile. "If I'm not, you need to know."_

_His heart is beating rapidly in his chest, he can hardly see straight, confused as to what she was going to say. "Know what?"_

_She hugs him, bringing him close against her. Her hair brushes against his neck and she's warm against him, she was always warm. When she pulls away, his arms still around her she whispers to him a string of words that sound not like a secret, but a promise. "I love you, Bellamy." When her hands go to his face, he's startled. He hardly has time to react as she kisses him, but it takes him no time to act. He moves his hands, reaching up to hold her face as his fingers get lost in her hair as they kiss slowly._

_When he pulls back, there's hardly any space left between them, their faces close. He brushes her hair back, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and she smiles as he says back, "I love you."_

Bellamy thinks the funeral was rushed.

They stand in an awkward circle inside Clarke's old cell, her drawings still scratches into the cold cell walls and floor. He had been in here before, when they first arrived. He would only admit to Raven later that he spent his time at night in here mourning the loss of someone he could have saved. 

Raven speaks first, her words gentle, "I met Clarke for the first time after my ship landed roughly in the woods a few miles from camp." She recounts the time they met, how Bellamy had even tried to kill her. "I knew then that we were going to be friends, not because she had been fucking my boyfriend at the time but because how of strong she was as a leader, as someone you could confide in. She fought so many battles with her time on the ground, not to mention on the Ark too, and she didn't deserve the ending she got. She didn't deserve the people who left her and she most certainly didn't deserve me, the bitch who left her to die-" she holds up a glass, a concoction Monty had created in hopes of them getting drunk. "-she chose to be my friend and she chose to stay and fight. So that's what we'll keep doing. Fighting. We'll keep fighting for her."

"Cheers," Murphy mutters, holding up his little glass and they all tipped their glasses back and drank.

Bellamy coughs, trying hard not to wince at the taste, but it was shit. It tasted like shit. "What the hell is this, Monty? Poison?"

Monty's coughing too, covering his mouth with one hand as he stares at the cup in his hand. "Tried to make moonshine, but it's hard when-" he coughs again, shaking his head. "-the only thing you have is algae."

Emori goes next, looking at the drawings on the ground as she speaks, "We didn't know each other too well before, but she always treated me with kindness, not like a freak. I was worried about her for some time, knowing about her nickname Wanheda, but she was so nice to me. Of course when we were performing the transfusions, I was terrified they would try and use me as some sort of blood bank, but they didn't. She wouldn't do that to me and I admired her, she was a leader. She was brave and smart and technical and kind. She sacrificed herself to give me her helmet when mine broke, not knowing if her nightblood would work. She risked her health and her life for me. I owe her my life."

Bellamy raised his glass up to his lips after pouring himself some more and took the shot, wincing at the taste as it went down. The others did the same, filling their cups and drinking. Monty and Harper sat down on the old bed, his arm wrapped around her as they smiled. 

"Clarke was incredible," Harper says, looking towards Monty as she spoke before looking back at the others. "I remember all of the times she would just glare at you, Bell. I remember when she saved us from Mount Weather and I remember when she went into the City of Light for us. She saved us in so many ways, it's hard to keep track of it all."

Monty nods with her, smiling sadly as the drawings on the walls catch his eyes with wonder. "She saved Jasper's life. She risked her life to find the red seaweed to cure him and she risked her life escaping from Mount Weather to find the rest of you. She told me it wasn't safe there and it was hard to believe her behind all of the chocolate cake and fresh water, but I trusted her word. I think I've always trusted her, deep down."

Raven nods, drinking more as she says, "She had the weight of the world on her shoulders."

"She was our Atlas," Bellamy whispers. "War and death followed her everywhere she went but she still came out on top. She lead us to so many victories with so many plans that I argued with her about." He laughs, shaking his head, "We butted heads so much that I was afraid we'd never see eye to eye. Not until we-" he shakes his head with a smile. "-were tripping out in the woods and _forgave_ each other. I saw her differently after that, she wasn't my adversary anymore, she was my partner."

Murphy laughs with him. "She trusted me when I came back from being banished and practically gave everyone the plague."

" _God_ ," Raven groans. "I almost forgot about that, you dick!"

Murphy holds his hands up with a smile, "Blame the grounders, they wanted revenge and they chose the right cockroach to do it with."

She rolls her eyes, but there was still a smile on her face and Bellamy wondered what was being shared between them. A moment between friends or lovers?

"She was an excellent leader and friend," Echo says. "I don't think she liked me much, but did anyone then either? But she didn't push me away when I came with you to Becca's lab. She let me in and gave me an extra suit and let me come with you to space. I was an enemy for so long and she helped make me feel like I wasn't, like I was truly apart of something _good_. I wasn't just Echo Kom Azgeda, I was just Echo. I only needed to be Echo." She raises her cup and drinks, before pouring herself more and drinking again with a wild smile. 

"I can't believe she's gone," Murphy says, shaking his head as he moves around the room. He touches the wall near the door, tracing his fingers over the drawing of a scorpion. "She was our doctor, our leader, our friend, and our family."

"Could she get anymore titles?" Raven laughs before raising a finger with a smile and saying, "Wanheda."

"Mountain Slayer," Murphy adds.

"Fleimkepa and Skaikru Ambassador," Echo says with a grin.

"Forgetting the most important one," Bellamy says, leaning back against the wall. 

"And what might that be?" Raven asks, smiling as she already knows.

Bellamy takes a sip of his drink, head already feeling fuzzy and warm. "Princess."

They continue to drink, laughing and remembering everything they can about Clarke to the point Bellamy has nearly heard it all. He remembers her fondly, his heart and his head getting used to the way he thinks about her, not finding as much pain lurking inside his chest as he remembers. He knows there will be pain and it won't be easy, but it's been lightened. He doesn't have to carry her burden by himself anymore.

______________________

"Bellamy," Clarke says into the radio as rain pours outside. She had been listening to it for hours with Madi by her side, fast asleep from a hard days work of keeping everything hunkered down for the coming storm. "It's been five hundred and ninety-nine days since Praimfaya. I've been speaking to you for over two years, every day. Seems kind of unbelievable at this point and even more unbelievable that I haven't heard anything back. I would think with Raven up there with you, you'd at least have a working communication system." She laughs, shaking her head as thunder cracks outside and almost shakes the house. 

She places the radio down to go to the window, watching as the window from outside blow some of her drawings around. She shuts the window, smiling to herself as she forgot to shut it from earlier. The days leading up to the storm had been humid, leaving everything feeling sticky and hot. Leaving the windows open had begun to be her only salvation from the growing heat. 

She crosses the room to pick up the radio again, speaking in a softer voice, "Can you even here me? If you can, I want you to know I miss you all. I miss you everyday. It's better down here now that I have Madi, if I hadn't of found her…I don't know where I would be right now. Physically and mentally. She's everything to me now, I need her as much as she needs me."

Her fingers run over the new drawings she had done earlier that night on the table and she traces the outline of Bellamy's jawline. "Do you have a beard, Bellamy? I thought I would ask because it's been some time since I've seen you and a part of me is worried that you grew one and I won't ever know what you look like with it. I hope when you come back down, I can see you with one. I'll make fun of you of course, but at least I would see it." She runs the pads of her fingers gently over the freckles she had drawn from memories. She had always wanted to run her fingers over his face, trace the outlines of his freckles and all of the scars. 

"Are you okay without me?" she asks gently, a new type of emotion rising up in her. "Is everyone surviving without me up there? Is it better without me?" She shakes her head, thinking to herself, _of course they aren't alright without me. They miss me, I bet they miss me a lot._ "Do you actually miss me? A part of me is terrified that you're alright without me there, that I was never truly needed. I was afraid of that when I left after Mount Weather and came back, everyone was fine. It was like they didn't even need me."

Sighing, she moves away from the drawings and goes to the window. the sky was dark with the billowing storm clouds coming in with an ominous shelf of rain. The wind whipped the trees by the house to their sides, leaves blowing wildly around and she feared she would have to move Madi somewhere safer to ride out the rest of the storm. 

"I'm sorry I left," she says. "I'm sorry I left you."

Wiping her face and finding it slightly wet, she wonders if she will ever recover from this or if they will. A part of her, a bad part of her, hopes they never recover from leaving her behind. The angry, revenge seeking part of her prays they never forget what they did but the kind and understanding part of her knows they had to leave her and she's accepted that and is okay. But she's still so angry, but she would never voice it to them, incase they would hear…but sometimes it was worth it incase they could. "I'm angry, Bellamy. I'm so angry I'm here sometimes that it scares me. But I know the choices you made were the right ones and if I hadn't of been left behind, I wouldn't of found Madi. Madi is the world to me now, much like you were at a time."

She speaks honestly into the radio, remembering something that had happened days before, "I had a dream about you, Bell. We were back at the original camp, the one we helped build together for the rest of the hundred. It was just another passing day, but you were there and you were so happy. Everyone was so happy…Octavia, Wells, Jasper, they were all there. We had a bonfire and then I woke up and it was like the life was sucked right out of me. I wished it was real, I wish we were back at the beginning but we were the people we were now. The ones who had become friends and trusted each other, not the ones who were always at each others throats," she laughs, shaking her head. "Do you remember what we were like in the beginning? Hot headed and stubborn and scared."

She sighs, resting the radio to her forehead as another crack of thunder shakes the house. "I have to go," she whispers. "It's late and the storm is still coming in strong. I should get as much sleep as I can before it gets bad."

She clicks off and places the radio down on the table, turning to go back to Madi who was still curled up on the bed sleeping soundly. She smiles, wondering how she got so lucky with her.

______________________

"Do you think this piece of shit radio will ever work?" Murphy asks, holding up the pieces of radio Raven had taken apart and put back together over a dozen times. 

She glares at him, "Probably never is you keep manhandling it like that." She snatches it from him and places it back down on the table, fiddling with the screws and thinking about taking it apart again to just to see if it works, which she knows it won't. 

"You've been working on this for months," Murphy states, sitting down next to her as she works. "It seems like a lost cause." Sitting back in her seat, she pushes him away from her, his chair moving away from her as he laughs. He holds both hands up in surrender as he says, "Listen, I'm just here speaking the truth! It probably won't ever work, besides do we really even need it?"

"Yes," Raven sighs. "We need it to communicate with the bunker, to talk to Octavia. Even though Bellamy has been in a better mood since we had the funeral for Clarke sixty-three days ago, but he's still sulking about her. I don't want to eat another dinner with him with that stupid frown on his face. So maybe if I got this damn thing working and he could talk to O, then maybe he'd finally be in high spirits. But until then? I still have to see his face when he force feeds himself algae like he's just seen his dog killed. I can't stand it."

"Damn, Rae," Murphy says softly. "Didn't know you had it bad for him."

She punches him this time, in the shoulder. "Shut up dickhead and hand me the screwdriver alright?"

Raven didn't know when she became so comfortable around Murphy until about four months ago. She hadn't been aware of it until then and she was worried a part of him wanted more from her. She was afraid of what she would do if it came down to it. After Wick and Finn, she wasn't sure where she was and what she wanted anymore. But Murphy had been spending more time with in the workshop and out and she wondered what it would be like to fall into him, to trust him more than she had now. 

_She steps into his room, where he had stationed himself nearly across the Ark in solitude. She knocks on the wall, gaining his attention away from the window that looked out over the vast emptiness of space. "So, this is where you hid yourself?"_

_He doesn't say anything, keeping his eyes trained on the darkness._

_"Murphy, come on," she says playfully, stepping further into the room. She tries to hide her limp as she walks to him, placing a hand on the back of his chair. "You don't have to hide in here forever, you still have a room with everyone else."_

_"You think I don't know that?" he responds, voice rougher than usual. When he talks again, his voice is softer and calmer, "It's more peaceful out here, that's all."_

_She drums her fingers on the back of his chair, purposely letting the tips of her fingers touch the back of his neck. What surprises her the most is that he doesn't move, he lets her touch him gently like it was the most calming thing in the universe. "Can I at least sit with you? Just for a little while?"_

_He nods, scooting over in his seat and letting her rest gently next to him. Her braces leg rubbing against his and theres a tenseness that rushes over him and she notices. She knows why, she's always known why._

_"I forgave you, remember?" she says in a whisper._

_He nods. "I know, it's just…I really hurt you back then. I almost killed you, Raven."_

_"Yeah, so what?"_

_"So-_ so what _?!"_

_"You heard me."_

_He's shocked, mouth open gasping, "You almost died! I fucking-I fucking shot you and you almost died." He looks away from her, eyes closed as he breathes heavily and says, "You almost died and it was my fault. It was all my fault and I can't-I won't-just get over it."_

_"But I'm over it." She's trying to make him feel better, but she understands him and where he's coming from. But she couldn't possibly understand how he feels, she won't ever understand that. "We made peace, Murphy. We're friends and I forgave you. Do you hear that? Are you even listening to me?"_

_He doesn't say anything._

_She repeats herself, pleading with him. "We're friends and I forgave you. I forgive you, I've told you this before and I'll keep telling you until you understand. I forgive you, John. I forgive you."_

_He takes her hand silently and they sit together in their silence._

_She stares out into the darkness, watching the stars and the wonder of what could possibly be living out there without them knowing. More people? Another world? She's terrified of what could be out there, what new threats that could hurt them. She couldn't lose anymore people and she was terrified that she would lose him. Her hands tightens in his and he returns the grip as she says, "I know the truth about you and Emori."_

_He still doesn't say anything, keeping is eyes forward._

_"I know that you staged your big fight," she says, hoping it will spark something in him to tell her the truth. She wanted to hear it from him. "I know that you broke up a month before but needed a way to voice it for us to know. I know that she was the one to do it-"_

_"Raven-" he starts, but shakes his head._

_"You can tell me."_

_He sighs, still not looking at her. "We weren't compatible anymore. It was easier being away from her than with, and she had begun to notice how distant we were becoming. She said it was because I wasn't 'invested enough' and that I didn't 'care.' But I did. I loved her. More than anything."_

_"Then why let her break it off?"_

_"I saw the way she looked at Echo," he says simply. "They had become closer, since both of them were originally grounders. They weren't like us. They weren't from the sky, so they found more things they were common in and one of them was being into each other."_

_"And you're alright with that?"_

_"Better her than Bellamy."_

_"Bellamy?" Raven gasps. "What the hell are you talking about?"_

_"We both see how Echo looks at him," he laughs. She looks at him, loving the way his eyes crinkle and the way his lips turn up slowly as he smiles. "At least she used to look at him before I practically forced Emori to talk to Echo, to get to know her."_

_"So you set them up? While you two were still together?"_

_He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it and laughs again._

_She rests one arm on the back of the seat, turning to look at him while trying to hold back her laughter. "So you're telling me, while you two were_ still _together, you told her to go flirt with Echo because you knew she liked her. You didn't yell. You didn't break up with her then and there, you just told her to go off and get laid."_

_"Yeah…basically."_

_She hits his arm playfully, rolling her eyes as she turns to face the window again. "Glad to know when you're with someone, you like to set them up with different people besides_ you _."_

_He bumps her shoulder with his, taking her hand again and mumbling, "Let's just sit here for a while, okay?"_

_"Okay," she nods, finding herself moving closer to him._

_She was always moving closer. She sits with her hand in his and feels at home. Sure, she felt at home on the Ark, but this was different. This was Murphy for Gods sake. But she watched through the darkness for a sigh, for something to tell her to go for it, to take the leap of fate right into his arms and in a blink of an eye, she watches as a meteor shoots past them. She sits higher in her seat and squeezes his hand for she would take this as a sign, knowing sooner or later, they would both act on it._

"Maybe after this you can finally fix the heater in Monty's room, he's been complaining about it to Harper who's told Emori who told Echo who told me," he sighs. "And as much as I love hanging out with Echo, it's hard to think when half the time she's telling me to tell you about it."

Raven looks up at him, narrowing her eyes as she wondered what it would be like if she just jumped him here and now. 

"Raven?" Murphy asks, eye brows furrowed as he stares at her. "You alright?"

She shakes her head out of her trance, "What?"

"You're staring at me funny, that's all," he says with a laugh. "Kind of like the way Bellamy used to before he would chew me out."

"Sorry," she says. "Just thinking about what would happen if I shoved the screwdriver up your ass if you kept bothering me."

He rolls his eyes, getting up from his seat. He pats her on the shoulder as he leaves, a hint of a smile on his lips as he says to her from the door, "Think about the heater alright? I'll come by later to see if you've _finally_ gotten that piece of shit to work."

Raven laughs, spinning around in her seat to pick up the pieces of the radio and the receiver to get back to work. She puts her head down and fiddles with the controls after putting it all back together. She holds the mic and speaks, praying it's being heard somewhere, "Anyone read? This is Raven Reyes of the Ark Station, can anyone read me?"

All she gets is silence from the other end and she puts her head down, groaning because it wasn't working and she wanted it to work so badly. She messes with the wiring and tightens screws and bolts, wondering if all it took was a little extra tightness and a little extra pressure, the whole thing would come alive. She has her head down, resting her forehead against the coolness of the table with her eyes closed. She would let herself rest, then she would start all over again for the thousandth time.

She doesn't hear it at first, not comprehending what the sound is until her head flies up and she finally hears the noise for what it is: static. It was a scratchy sound that was followed with deep staticky voices, not coming in clearly enough. Just as she's about to cry with joy, to finally be at peace that she got the damn thing to work, the receiver cuts out and it's all lost.

She's so confused that she stares at the receiver for a good five minutes, thoughts running through her brain with speed.  _Someone heard me, someone is out there. It could be Octavia or Abby or Kane, it could be someone good._

She turns the dials of the radio and turns her mic back on, letting out a shaky breath before she speaks, "Come in, come in, this is Raven Reyes of the Ark Station. If anyone is out there, please radio back."

She waits.

And she waits.

Until a crackle erupts and the voice is muffled and distorted, but a little more time she could get it working. She has too.

"This is…from the…do…read?" the voice comes back, deep and fuzzy with the growing static. "From…ground…"

There is a moment that breaks in Raven, her eyes going blurry and she has trouble figuring out what is wrong before the tears fall from her eyes. They roll down her cheeks, hot and wet, and she has trouble regaining herself as she speaks into the mic, voice wavering, "Octavia? Is that you?"

The voice is still distant and staticky and is growing faint, but Raven hears it and there is another moment that strikes her with such a pain she has trouble figuring out if she had stopped breathing entirely or had been given fresh air to breathe. The voice speaks and it comes in clear for the first time, a happy sigh escaping Raven like she had just been woken from a deep sleep. 

"Raven?" the voice asks and she feels like she could break down and sob for joy. She brings her hand up to her mouth, trying not to make any audible sobbing sounds as she presses down on the mic and says, "Yes, this is me-this is Raven-"

There's laughter on the other side and Raven could hear her smile through the mic as she says back to her, "This is Clarke."

______________________

Clarke has the radio to her face, the storm is still raging on outside. She had woken up the next day, not sure whether it was midday or night, the sky just as dark as it was before. "It's still raining here," she says into the mic. "And I know it's only been a day, but it feels like it won't ever stop."

The wind still pushes against house, the shutters rattling against the walls. She had blown out all of her candles from the day before, but she couldn't find her matches to relight them. She wanted it to be at least a little bright in here when Madi woke, but she had misplaced the matches once they came in the day before. She had been overturning books and clothes to find it when she found something else instead. She held it in her other hand, rubbing her thumb over the coolness of the watch. "I found my father's watch earlier, Bell. I thought I had misplaced it ages ago, but it had fallen behind the lining in my old jacket." She sighs, looking down at the old thing that had stopped ticking way before it's time. "Do you remember how it set Finn off? How he had seen it and went on a…rampage. He saw it and it ultimately lead to his death. Imagine if he hadn't found it-where would he be now?"

She places the watch down on the table besides the drawings she had been so mesmerized with last night.

"Do you think he would have died anyways?" she asks the radio. "Do you think he would have found a way to anger the grounders and ended up the same way? Tied to the post, dead?" She shakes her head, going through her old drawings she kept in her bag, away from the ones she let Madi see. She pulls out one of the old wrinkles pages, holding it up towards the window to try and get a better light from the dark clouds outside. It illuminated the pages slightly better than the darkness and shadows that lurked inside the home. "He was handsome, he really was." She says it more to herself than to him as she stares at one of her earlier drawings. She had done it when she first found the home and Madi, secretly drawing at night while the young girl slept soundly. She had gotten everything right except for the hair. She would never get the hair right.

"I think about that night sometimes," she whispers now. "The night I killed him."

She crosses the room to the front door, wanting to go outside and feel the rain against her skin. To feel the sky cry against her. But she holds back, holding the radio back up to her face as she says, "Killing him myself was one of the hardest things I've had to do, besides Mount Weather. I had loved him, in a twisted longing type of way. I wasn't allowed to have him, I wasn't supposed to, and it made it thrilling and even more desirable. But I loved Raven more, I valued our friendship more. But I still think about him, kind of in the way I think of Lexa. They were two of the three greatest loves of my life." She smiles, pulling at the fragile curtains up against the door as she says, "Be happy that I said two out of the three, thought I'd count you in even though we didn't truly _have_ anything. I would like to think we did, before we were separated."

She moves across the room to the table, sitting down in one of the old wooden chairs as she talks, "Do you think more would have happened between us if you were here or if I was there? Do you think we would have had one of those great love stories people read about?" She laughs to herself, there would be no great love story for them if she was here and he was there…and if they didn't know if the other was even truly alive.

_Bellamy looks down at her, his fingers working their way into her hair as he held her against him. "I love you."_

_The feeling that begins to course through her like the blood pumping in her veins is one she would never forget as she tilts her head up. They kiss like the world is ending, because it is and there's a part of her afraid he'll be torn away from her. She wraps an eager arm around his neck, pulling him closer in their shared moment. His hands go to her waist, pulling her hips closer, his fingers digging into the rough fabric of her suit._

_She thinks this is it, this is their grand moment and nothing will ever come to stop it, but her body things otherwise just as he takes a step forward to push her back against the wall. She places her hands on his chest, pushing him away as she goes into a coughing fit, one that burns her throat and lungs as blood splatters up against her palm._

_"Sorry," she says, wiping her hand off on her suit before wiping her mouth with the back of her fist._

_He goes back to her, sliding his hands over her hips and looking at her, truly looking at her. "You're beautiful, even when you're coughing up blood from radiation poisoning."_

_She laughs, ducking her head before looking back up at him. "You really know how to charm a girl, don't you?"_

_He mirrors her laugh, his eyes shining. "You'll be fine, you know that right?" he says, voice dropping as he brushes her hair back again. "This will pass, the nightblood will work and you'll live. Through all of this, you will live, I promise you that."_

_If only he knew the lengths that promise would go._

She opens her mouth to speak again when the radio crackles back to her and she thinks she overhears it, like it was just the wind but it happens again. 

And again and again _and again._

The static is loud and yelling at her and she has a hard time keeping it shushed for the sleeping Madi. She covers the radio with her hand as a voice speaks to her, muffled and desperate, "…read? This…of the…anyone read…"

Clarke holds down the button and rushes out with, "This is Clarke Kom Skaikru, do you read me?"

She is answered with only static and she fears this was her only chance to find another human being out there. 

Almost out of hope, the radio crackles back to life with a pleading, "Come in, come in, this is…if anyone…radio back…"

Clarke holds the mic so closely to her mouth, she's afraid it'll be wet from her lips when she pulls back. "This is Clarke from the ground. Do you read me? This is Clarke from the ground."

The person who answers back is clear and Clarke has a hard time believing she is truly hearing this and this isn't some corrupted mirage playing tricks on her, "Octavia? Is that you?"

Her breathing is hard and she has to wait a moment to radio back, collecting herself. When she speaks back, she has tears in her eyes and a smile on her face as she asks simply, "Raven?"

She hears a gasp and a sigh of relief as the voice says, "Yes, this is me-this is Raven-"

Clarke laughs, covering her mouth with one hand as tears run down her face in heavy streams as she says back, "This is Clarke."

There's a moment of silence between the two before Raven is back, speaking to her through her own watery words, " _Clarke_ -how? How are you alive?! How did you survive the death wave?"

Clarke looks around, not noticing she had braced herself against the table as she first heard her speak. "It was the nightblood. It kept me alive, it saved me-"

"Bellamy told me you had coughed up blood, that you weren't even sure if the nightblood would work-" Raven stops herself with a laugh. "-I guess we know now it worked for real. But where are you? How did you get the radio to work?"

Clarke shrugs, but knows she won't see her so she says rapidly, "Found the radio later on, in the rubble of Arkadia. I found the rover before that, buried in the sand-"

"You didn't."

"I did," she says with a smile. "It was still in working condition. Who would of thought the old thing would survive something as catastrophic as the death wave?"

Raven doesn't respond, but when she does, Clarke can hear the emotion in the girls voice, "I thought you were-" she sighs. "-we thought you were dead. We thought you were dead, Clarke. We thought we left you to _die_."

"I'm here," she says back softly, her own emotion rising up in her. "I'm alive. You didn't leave me to die, Raven. You left me to live."

"Shut up," Raven laughs, her voice still full with emotion but she laughs still. "You're just saying that to make me feel better for leaving you to literally die alone in a wave of fire and radiation. You're just being nice."

Clarke laughs back, finding herself more happy to hear another voice than she thought. "At least you all got to the Ark safely, right? You're all still alive up there?"

"Alive and kicking," Raven says and she can hear the smile in her voice. "Kinda like you."

"How are they? Everyone up there?" Clarke asks, voice softer and interested, but scared to know. She was scared to know about _him_.

"We're good, we're _great_ now."

Clarke rolls her eyes and says with a sigh, "So, when do I get to hear from everyone? When do I get to shock them that I'm very much alive and very much waiting for you to return in three years?"

"How much do you want to bet that when Bellamy hears your voice he'll pass out?" Raven asks her. 

Clarke kicks her feet up against the table, finding herself leaning back in her seat as she says, "I would bet you a lifetime supply of Monty and Jasper's moonshine that he would pass out and then pass out _again_ when he comes too and you tell him it's real."

Raven is silent again and Clarke is afraid they'd lost contact, that their connection fell through before her voice lights up the room again and Clarke is sighing with relief.

"Monty made moonshine again, this time out of algae."

"How bad is it?"

"Horrible," Raven tells her with a laugh, her voice is lighter like she's come to terms that she left her friend on the ground alone.

She doesn't know how wrong she is.

______________________

Raven could hardly breathe.

Clarke was alive.

She was _alive_.

And speaking to her.

Speaking to her through the radio she had found, the radio she had kept with her for two years radioing in and praying someone would hear her. Raven just didn't think she would be the one to finally hear her after all of this time. She wonders how much time would have passed if she had decided to start working on the radio again after a year. Clarke's calls would have gone unnoticed and they would never have known she was alive.

 _She was alive_.

"Raven?" Clarke says through the receiver. "You still there?"

"Yeah," she breaths with a smile she hardly had known come to her face. "I'm still here, sorry."

"What? You still shocked that I'm here talking to you?" she laughs and Raven can almost picture her. Beautiful blonde hair brighter than the sun, a smile more graceful than a gods, with the face of a leader and friend. "Because I get it, I am too. I'm still waiting for the moment when I wake up from this dream." 

And she is too. She's waiting for the moment when she wakes up and finds herself asleep at her desk and that Clarke has been dead all this time, her brain playing tricks on her. But it doesn't. She doesn't wake up because she's been awake this entire time, living her dreams with her eyes wide open.

"How did you do it, Clarke?" she asks suddenly, her voice softer than she intended. "How did you survive so long on your own?"

Clarke waits a moment to respond and when she does, Raven's heart breaks for her. "It was difficult. When I left Becca's island, the oceans were dried up and there was no life anywhere. I couldn't find food, I was starving and dehydrated. It wasn't until I found a vulture, showing me that things still lived after the death wave. It was a new start, fresh hope."

"I'm sorry you're alone," Raven says. "I'm sorry we left you to die alone."

Clarke laughs and it shocks Raven. How could she be laughing?

"I'm not alone," Clarke confesses. "I found someone, fifty-eight days after. Another nightblood. She was just a child, maybe six years old. It took a while, but we started to trust each other. I taught her English and we found a house, in the only patch of green left on this stupid place."

"Bellamy's patch of green," Raven whispers. "He's been obsessing over it, thought it was a sign and if only we knew…that you were alive down there waiting for us on it." Raven hates herself then and there. She hates the fact that Clarke has been alive and that they left her down there alive was even worse than dying. With her dead, it was almost like it was easier to live with the fact but with her alive? Still kicking and breathing? It made what they did to her a thousand times worse. "I'm so sorry, Clarke. I'm so sorry we didn't wait-we could've waited but we didn't. We made the call and left you down there- _we left you_ -"

"It's okay," Clarke reassures her, trying to make her feel better for what she did. "Raven, it's _okay_. I'm alive and I'm breathing and I'm fine. You didn't do anything wrong, you saved everyone. It was the right call, I would have made the same one."

Raven can't stop herself, tears rolling down her cheeks as she tries to hold them back. She gasps, breathing roughly as she tries to hold back, but she can't anymore. She can't hold herself back as she opens her mouth and sobs, inhuman noises coming from her. She hardly notices the door to her workshop open and a worried Murphy come running to her, forcing her to look at him through the blurriness of the tears rushing out of her eyes as she lets go of the mic.

"Whoa-whoa-" he says, trying to calm her. His hands brushing back her hair and tears, forcing her to look at him. "-what happened? Are you alright?"

She hardly has time to say anything, her hands gripping his arms as the receiver crackles to life and Clarke is speaking to her, "Raven, it's okay, I promise! I'm fine, I'm alive and fine!"

Murphy looks from Raven to the receiver, mouth open and confused. "Was that-? What?"

"She's alive," Raven whispers to him, this time being the one to force him to look at her. "I got the piece of shit radio to work and she's alive-she's been alive this _entire_ time-"

The look that crosses his face is a mix between pure joy and complete and utter excitement as he rushes forward, grabbing the mic and holding down the button and laughing as he says, "I guess cockroaches really do survive anything."

The laughter from the other end is enough to warm both their hearts. Raven takes Murphy's hand as he sits down next to her, both of them sharing a silent moment as Clarke speaks to them, "I would never admit to this out loud, but I missed you Murphy. Missed your witty comments a little too much." 

"Miss you too," he murmurs into the mic, looking towards Raven as he lets go of the button. He faces her, taking both of her hands as she finally controls her breathing and the tears subside to a dull dribble. "How do we tell Bellamy that the love of his life is still very much alive?"

Raven shrugs. "We just had a funeral for her, we can't just rush it out and say it. We need to ease him into it, tell him we have a surprise for him or something and have him just sit down and speak to her, alone. It's probably something she wants too."

"He's going to pass out when he finds out," Murphy says and she can see the smile peaking up at his lips as she says with a grin, "Clarke and I made a bet, a lifetime supply of Monty and Jaspers moonshine that he would pass out. But since we don't necessarily have that, I'll bet you a full bottle of Monty's algae moonshine."

"How is it a bet if we are both betting on the same thing?" he asks, but he already knows where this is heading.

"Well, if we're both right, you owe me a drink."

"Like we sit down, outside at the meal table, and have a true drink together-"

"Kinda like a date," she adds, looking at him through her lashes as she wonders what a drink could lead too. 

"Jesus, will you two at least hang up with me before you start making out?" Clarke says suddenly, her voice ringing out into the room. Raven's cheeks start to get red as she notices the button had been pressed on the entire time and when Murphy let go, he hadn't truly turned it off. 

Murphy is laughing as he scoots closer to the table, "Sorry about that-Raven you better go prepare Bellamy, Clarke and I have lots to discuss."

"It's a cockroach thing, sorry," Clarke replies and Raven can hear the smile in her voice, she could hear the happiness.

"Yeah, come on," Murphy says, pushing against her chair and watching it roll away from him. "It's a cockroach thing, you wouldn't understand."

"I'd beg to differ," she says with a laugh, standing. "I'll be back in ten." She goes to the door, hand on the doorframe as she peers back over her shoulder to say with more confidence than she's comfortable with, "I'll hold you to our bet."

He smiles, looking at her with a look she hasn't seen for a long time. "It's a date."

She repeats him as she leaves, "It's a date." She was suddenly more awake than she's ever been, like she had been splashed in the face with water. She was refreshed, energized, and for the first true time in a while, she was happy. More happy than she'd ever been on the ground, she thinks. Sure, she had her moments like at girls night, but this was different. She had just been presented with some of the best news she could of ever dreamed of and her heart was soaring, her leg didn't seem to hurt her as much in this moment, her body and mind too focused on her new revelation. Her friend was alive and she didn't have a care in the world.

______________________

Clarke missed everyone.

But she missed Murphy a little more than she thought.

She holds the radio close, wondering how Madi was still asleep through all the excitement as lighting strikes somewhere outside and Clarke hears the crack of wood splintering and prays it doesn't strike again. Seconds later, thunder claps and she knows the storm is know settled right on top of them in their little home. 

"Clarke," she hears Murphy say slowly on the radio and she has a hard time pulling herself to listen as the wind rushes around the home. "I missed you so much." He sounds pained almost, like he was fighting himself not to cry in front of her. "I missed you so damn much."

She closes her eyes as she takes a breath, surprised she was so overcome with emotion so easily. "I hated you for so long, Murphy."

"Well-shit Clarke-"

"No, no, hear me out," she laughs. She waits, seeing if he would let her ramble and he does. He stays quiet and she speaks slowly and surely of herself. "You were a cruel person, someone I wouldn't trust. Someone who would fight for the sake of having fun and a good laugh. You were someone who wasn't afraid to betray your friends, to hurt them back because they hurt you. You were someone who believed in revenge for the sake of revenge. But you showed me how wrong I was. You are so kind, Murphy. You are funny, charming, and trusting. I let you be hanged for killing Wells. I let them hurt you. Banish you. You didn't deserve that, and I don't think I ever told you how truly sorry I am for that. I watched from the sidelines. And what happened with Finn at Tondc, when he killed all of those people-I let you have some of the blame. I let people blame you for what _he_ did. You tried to stop it, you tried to be a good person, and I'm sorry I never saw that in you." She pauses, wiping her eyes. "You've become such a good person, John Murphy. You are a good man. So stop beating yourself up over things that weren't your fault, because you are _a good man_."

She waits for him to respond and it takes him a few minutes. When he does speak, there is a strain in his voice as he whispers to her, "Thank you-thank you, Clarke. I'm sorry I wasn't kind to you for so long. I'm sorry that I mocked you and-and tormented Jaha for so long. You didn't deserve that and neither did he. No one deserved what I did to them-making Bellamy hang himself and shooting-" he breathes heavily. "-and shooting Raven. It wasn't right of me."

"Blame bad parenting and being sent to the ground to die," she says with a small laugh. "That's what I do."

"Seems about right," he says back. "Having your mother tell you that it's your fault your father died, is kind of-I don't know-the root cause of my issues."

Clarke levels with him, understanding him more and more. "Yeah, and having your mother turn your father in so he can be floated is the root of mine. Seems like we have more in common that we thought, cockroach."

He laughs and Clarke wonders what he looks like now. Has two years changed him? Does he have more facial hair? "So, how's life down on earth? Everything you hoped and dreamed it would be?"

"And more," she says with a smile, twirling a strand of hair. "I found someone down here, someone like me. Her name is Madi, so if you were afraid you'd also left me down here to die _alone_ , then be happily wrong. Madi is the sweetest kid I've ever known and I love her. I've told her about you, about everyone. She says you aren't her favorite, but I'm hoping with time she'll begin to see why I started to like you too."

"Let me guess, you told her all about how the great John Murphy tried to kill all of his friends countless times and almost killed them all with a grounder sickness too?" he says and she can hear the laughter in his voice. 

"Oh, I definitely told her about that," she replies. "But it's important in your character development! She has to know the bad to know the good."

"Yeah," he scoffs and she could almost see him rolling his eyes at her. "Sure." He waits a moment before speaking again and she could hear the chair squeaking against the floor in whatever room he was in. "Are you happy there? I know you say you aren't alone and you have-you have Madi. But are you happy?"

She doesn't respond right away, waiting a moment before bringing the radio back up to her face and whispering truthfully, "Yes. I'm happy."

"Are you lying?"

She shakes her head. "No," she laughs. "I'm not lying. Promise."

"Good, because Raven just poked her head in and told me that Bellamy is on his way," he says to her and her heart was already racing. She was nervous to talk to him, to hear his voice after wondering what it sounded like. Would it be different? No. It hadn't been _that_ long. It was only two years, that's all.

 _That's all_.

"I'll leave you on speaker," he says to her and she smiles. "Kinda hoping he passes out."

"So you can go on your date with Raven?" 

"Maybe," he answers sheepishly before gasping and saying, "Okay, okay, he's coming-" She hears the chair screech away and bump into something hard and she hears it all. She hears his voice and her heart melts. It's the same rough voice she'd fallen in love with and she wishes she could reach out and touch him.

"Why did you bring me in here, really?" she hears Bellamy ask. "You said there was a surprise in here but it's just the workshop, Raven."

"But it has me in it," Murphy says. "Aren't I special enough?"

"Compared to the book I was just reading?" Bellamy says. "No. Not so much."

"Thought you'd like to see I finally got the radio to work," Raven says to him, her voice dripping with delight. "And no, before you ask me if we got any communications from the bunker, we didn't. But-" she prolongs the word before rushing out with, "-we got something better. Better than better. The best thing that could possibly happen and probably the most shocking, so please-don't throw up or anything when you hear this."

"Hear what?"

Clarke waits a dramatic minute before taking a deep breath and saying with as much clearness as she can behind the tears forming in her eyes, "Bellamy?"

Bellamy is gasping as he breathes, "What the hell? Is that- _is that_ -" she hears him rush forward, running into the table. "- _Clarke_?"

"It's me," she whispers. "It's me-it's Clarke-" She hears a thud and she has a hard time trying to figure out what it is before sighing and asking, "Did he just faint?"

"Yes," Raven responds. "Yes he did."

______________________

Bellamy sits against his bed and the wall, a book in his hands. He had found it in a stack in one of the old bedrooms and thinking it would be good, he decided to sit down and try and read it. But he doesn't know how wrong he is. 

It was horrible. From beginning to about thirty pages in, it was just horrible. 

No plot. No good dialogue. And not even a good dynamic between characters. 

He was almost relieved when Raven runs into his room with a smile plastered across her face. "Come with me, I have something incredible to show you."

When he gets up, a part of him is almost reluctant to go with her. He hadn't planned on doing much for the day and getting up, as lazy as that sounds, was out of the picture. "If you're trying to get me to try some of Monty's algae-then count me out. I'm not about to end up like Murphy, puking my guts up or being knocked out for a week."

"It's nothing like that, I promise," Raven says and he sees the smile that creeps up onto her lips before disappearing and he has a hard time believing her. 

He follows her to her workshop, hands in his pockets as they walk in to see Murphy jump from his seat and stand awkwardly by the wall, arms behind him as he smiles in greeting.

"Why did you bring me in here, really?" he asks, taking his hands from his pockets to cross his arms over his chest. "You said there was a surprise in here but it's just the workshop, Raven."

Murphy grins even bigger. "But it has me in it. Aren't I special enough?"

"Compared to the book I was just reading? No. Not so much," he lies, wanting to know what the surprise was. Was it something he could see? Because all he could see was Murphy standing like a kid who was just caught doing something he shouldn't. Or could it be something he could hear? It couldn't possibly be that because all he could hear over the silence that followed his voice was the old creaking and groaning of the Ark.

"Thought you'd like to see I finally got the radio to work," Raven says, moving across the room to stand with Murphy, the same smile on both of their faces. "And no, before you ask me if we got any communications from the bunker, we didn't. But-" she almost sings her words, like she was daring him to guess. "-we got something better. Better than better. The best thing that could possibly happen and probably the most shocking, so please-don't throw up or anything when you hear this."

 _Throw up?_ He thinks to himself, wondering what could be hidden behind the radio. "Hear what?"

He half expects one of them to trick him, to have some horrible noise answer him like an ill fitting prank. Instead, it's a gentle voice that leaves him with his heart dropping into his stomach. Instead it's a voice he thought he would only hear in his dreams, haunting him. Instead, it's her. It's her. 

"Bellamy?"

He can hardly breathe as he breaks out with, "What the hell? Is that- _is that_ -" he has trouble finishing his sentence, eye sight going fuzzy for a moment before he gasps and rushes to the table with the mic, "- _Clarke_?" He doesn't believe it's her, it can't be her. She's dead, she's been dead for two years. She died in the death wave, she can't possibly be speaking to him. This wasn't her, it wasn't her.

But it shocks him to hear her say gentle, "It's me-" He has trouble hearing her, both hands flat against the table as he begins to have trouble stay upright. "-it's Clarke." His body goes limp underneath him starting with his knees and he buckles like a house of cards. His back hits the ground and he stares up at the ceiling with her distant voice asking with a laugh, "Did he just faint?"

He hears Raven respond to her just as he's losing consciousness, "Yes. Yes he did." His eyesight goes completely black, shutting him out from the world.

_"Are you alright my love?" she asks him gently, brushing his hair back from his forehead and out of his eyes._

_He nods, taking one of her hands into his and kissing her knuckles and then each finger tip. "Now that I'm with you, of course." She runs her free hand through his hair and he was trouble staying away and in her arms. The bed was warm with her in it. It was almost so much warmer with her._

_"Why did you do it?" she asks, voice still soft as she speaks to him with a smile. "Why did you leave me down there?"_

_Her hands are so warm against him, he has trouble letting her run them over his skin. "What?"_

_"You left me down there to die," she says, moving closer to him as her hands begin to burn him. Her whole body was hot, nearly too hot to touch. "You left me to die, alone. You left me to die amongst the flames and the radiation. You leave me to die in the death wave while you lived happily up here. Why would you do that to me? Didn't you love me?"_

_"I do love you," he says, practically begging as he sits up. He tries to grip her hands but she burns him, his hands coming off red and blistered. She keeps the same smile as she repeats her words, chanting as her voice gets louder. "I love you!" he tries to yell over her chants, but she can't hear him. "Clarke-please! I love you! I love you! I promise I do!"_

_"Why did you do it?" she repeats, her face changing into contorted raged. "Why did you leave me down there? You left me there to die. You left me to die, alone." She's screaming at him, pushing him back against the bed as he struggled against her burning hands. Her flesh was on fire, melting and scarring and burning like old scraps left over a campfire. He struggled against her more, trying to push her off him as her melted flesh dripped onto him, searing pain spreading through his body like the blood in his veins._

_"I love you!" he wailed, throat aching as his voice almost gave out. "I love you, Clarke! I love you-"_

He woke up out of breath. 

He was sweating, beads of it rolling down the back of his neck as he sat up. He didn't completely recognize where he was, his head still grainy as he rubbed the back of his head. He was on the floor. He looks around more thoroughly and notices he was on the floor in Raven's workshop.

"Hey, buddy," Raven says to him, helping him stand up.

He rests against the table in front of him, blinking as he tries to remember what the hell just happened. "Why was I on the ground?" he groans, still rubbing the back of his head.

"You passed you," Murphy says from next to him, pulling out one of the chairs for him. "After you heard Clarke."

He tries to process what he just heard, looking at Murphy as he murmurs, "Clarke? What the hell are you talking about?"

The receiver behind him crackles with slight static before a voice, clear as day, rings out, "Hi." There's a moment where he can't breathe again, his knees weak underneath him as she rushes out with a gentle, "Don't pass out this time, alright?"

He looks at Raven and Murphy before back at the mic, reaching out with shaking hands. He pulls the mic up to his face and says in a strained voice, "Clarke? It's really you, isn't it?"

She laughs, a sound between joy and crying as she says back, "Yeah, it's me. It's really me, I swear."

He covers his mouth with his hand, finally sitting down in the seat Murphy had given him. He hears the two behind him slowly walk out of the room, the door shutting behind them as he sets the mic down to bury his face in his hands. "How?" he croaks, surprised his voice could even work. 

She sighs and he wonders if she's having a moment like his. "The nightblood worked."

He covers his mouth, trying to suppress the emotion that would soon flood out of him like a broken dam. "I'm so sorry- _I'm so sorry_ -"

She says his name like it was sacred and he almost passes out again just by her saying it, "Bellamy."

He says her name back, like a promise, "Clarke."

"Don't beat yourself up over what happened," she tells him and he wants to act on it, to not blame himself…but he does. He blames himself everyday for what happened. "It's not your fault, it was never your fault. You did the right thing, you all did. If you had waited, we all would have died. You would have died-" her voice breaks and he hears her clear her throat before continuing, "-I radioed you every day and I've told you the same thing over and over again-I forgive you. You're forgiven. It's not your fault and it won't ever be your fault."

She had radioed him every day and the thought of that, her messages going unanswered, unheard, breaks his heart. But was it a blessing he hadn't heard or a curse?

"I-" she sighs again, like she's struggling to say her words out loud to him. "-I love you, Bellamy. I always have and always will, and-and when you made the right decision-the best decision-I still loved you. Nothing you do or what anyone else does will change that, alright?"

He laughs, wiping his mouth as he smiles, "I love you too."

"Well, that's good," she chuckles and he imagines her rolling her eyes as him as she says, "Or this would be really awkward, don't you think?"

He can't contain his smile as he sits back in the chair, still feeling guilty because he's afraid he'll always feel that way, but thrilled to be hearing her voice after thinking for so long that she was dead. "You need to tell me everything, we have too much to catch up on."

"You think?" she whispers, followed by more laughter. "It's been two years, Bell, you better have some interesting stories to tell. Like for example, do you have a beard? Any facial hair? Maybe you have a full grown beard down to your shoulders-"

"Damn, Clarke," he grins. "Sounds like you want me to have facial hair."

"I just want to know," she says back and he can hear the smile in her voice, the happiness and the joy. Did she think he was dead all this time too? Or just ignoring all of her calls? "Because I've drawn you a couple times-"

"-more than just a couple!" a voice says in the background and he has a hard time trying to think of who it is because he's asking her, "Who is that? Is that O-"

Clarke's voice comes back, gentler, "No, I'm sorry. I couldn't get into the bunker, it's under rocks and rubble from the death wave, I'd need a hundred men to help me get them out."

He ignores the way his heart feels at the thought of his sister not being with her, but his mind goes to his original question, "Who is that then? The girl who just spoke-"

"I'm Madi," the voice says as it begins to sound like her and Clarke are wrestling for the radio as Clarke shouts, "Hey! I thought you were asleep-"

"And miss all of this fun? No way," Madi says back before her voice asks Bellamy, "So, you have a beard or what? We need to know-"

Bellamy touches his face, running his hand over the smoothness of his jaw and cheek, "I don't have one, but maybe I'll try and grow one out just for you-see if you like it in a few years."

"That means you need to draw him with it," Madi whispers to Clarke as Clarke responds laughing, "Take your finger off the button, we don't want him to know I've been drawing him-"

"-like everyday you mean? You don't want him to know that? The man you lo-" Madi sings before their voices are cut off and a laughing Clarke comes back out of breath, "That was Madi. I found her fifty-eight days after Praimfaya."

"How did she survive the radiation?"

"Nightblood, like mine but hers is authentic."

Bellamy nods, wishing he could reach through the mic and touch her. "I've missed you so much, Clarke," he confesses but realizes it's not much of a confession if everyone already knows. "I've missed you so damn much."

"I miss you too," she whispers. "It feels like an eternity without you, but it's just three more years right?" Her voice is light and filled with hope and he runs a hand through his hair with a smile as he rests against the table. His hands are warm against his face and his heart beats rapidly against his chest because she's alive. She's _been_ alive. He hadn't left her to die, she had lived and is still living safely. He has hope for them, he has hope for his friends and they will get back to her sooner rather than later. He knows the journey ahead of them won't be as smooth as he thinks, but when has it ever been easy? 

"Just three more years," he repeats, whispering as a smile goes to his face like he had just been given the chance to live again, it be free and to be happy.

He has hope. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ahh! I hope you all liked this! It took me a while to write it, going through different ideas and stuff. I wanted murven to play a bigger part, but I thought it was better to let it play a smaller role to focus on everyone and like their emotions with leaving Clarke and shit.  
> Well I hope you liked it! Let me know if you want a part 2 (it would be the rest of the years) & let me know if there's anything wrong (like grammar and spelling bc i've been known to be kinda shit at that)
> 
> if you wanna follow me, my tumblr is bellarkeatsea
> 
> thank you and love uuuuu!!!


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